Sherman Kent, (December 6, 1903 - March 11, 1986), was a
Yale UniversityYale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut, and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States. Yale has produced many notable alumni, including five...
history professor who during
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, and through 17 years of Cold War-era service in the
Central Intelligence AgencyThe Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government.It is an independent agency responsible for providing national security intelligence to senior United States policymakers....
pioneered many of the methods of
intelligence analysisIntelligence Analysis is the process of taking known information about situations and entities of strategic, operational, or tactical importance, characterizing the known, and, with appropriate statements of probability, the future actions in those situations and by those entities...
. He is often described as
"the father of intelligence analysis".
He was a graduate of
Yale UniversityYale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut, and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States. Yale has produced many notable alumni, including five...
where he studied European History with the intention of spending his career as an academic.
Sherman Kent, (December 6, 1903 - March 11, 1986), was a
Yale UniversityYale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut, and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States. Yale has produced many notable alumni, including five...
history professor who during
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, and through 17 years of Cold War-era service in the
Central Intelligence AgencyThe Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government.It is an independent agency responsible for providing national security intelligence to senior United States policymakers....
pioneered many of the methods of
intelligence analysisIntelligence Analysis is the process of taking known information about situations and entities of strategic, operational, or tactical importance, characterizing the known, and, with appropriate statements of probability, the future actions in those situations and by those entities...
. He is often described as
"the father of intelligence analysis".
He was a graduate of
Yale UniversityYale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut, and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States. Yale has produced many notable alumni, including five...
where he studied European History with the intention of spending his career as an academic. After graduating he did spend several years teaching and doing research but joined the O.S.S. with the outbreak of the war in Europe.
Sherman Kent first served within the Research and Analysis Branch of the
Office of Strategic ServicesThe Office of Strategic Services was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency .-Origins and activities:...
(OSS) as Chief of the Europe-Africa Division. In this capacity, he oversaw much of the process which would now be considered intelligence preparation of the battlespace in support of planning for
Operation TorchOperation Torch was the British-American invasion of French North Africa in World War II during the North African Campaign, started 8 November 1942....
, the 1942 Allied invasion of North Africa. (An irreverent wit, Kent once proposed for the heraldic emblem of the often-zany OSS, "A horse's ass ramptant on a Boston Social Register").
After a post-war stint at the National War College, Kent returned to Yale for three years, during which time he wrote his classic work on Strategic Intelligence. In November 1950,
during the crisis that followed the Chinese Communist incursion in the Korean War which prompted a build-up and reorganization of the American Intelligence Community, he was called to Washington to assist Harvard historian
William L. LangerWilliam Leonard Langer was the chair of the history department at Harvard University and the World War II volunteer head of the Research and Analysis branch of the Office of Strategic Services.-Biography:...
, with whom he had worked in OSS, to form a new CIA Office of National Estimates (ONE). He succeeded Langer as chief of ONE in 1952, serving in that position for the next fifteen years under four Directors of Central Intelligence in four presidential administrations.
Kent's ONE was "a small organization, consisting of a Board of National Estimates of between five and twelve senior experts, a professional staff of 25-30 regional and functional specialists, and a support staff." . Until it was dissolved, six years after Ken't retirement, in a Watergate-era CIA reorganization, ONE prepared more than 1500 speculative National Intelligence Estimates for the President and top foreign policy-makers.
Kent led ONE through years of challenge and crisis, including McCarthy-era accusations against one of Kent's young aides, future presidential advisor
William BundyWilliam Putnam "Bill" Bundy was a member of the CIA and foreign affairs advisor to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. He had a key role in planning the Vietnam War. After leaving government service he became a historian.-Early years:Raised in Boston, Massachusetts he came from a...
, and "predictive failures" during the
Cuban Missile CrisisThe Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation between the United States, the Soviet Union, and Cuba in October 1962, during the Cold War. In Russia, former Eastern Bloc, and communist countries , it is termed the "Caribbean Crisis" , while in Cuba it is called the "October Crisis"...
and other Cold War "flaps".
Kent's unique and enduring role within the US intelligence community was to formalize analytical "tradecraft" and methodologies, while encouraging creation of a
"literature of intelligence" to provide a formal mechanism for the transfer of knowledge and experiences between generations of analysts.
Sherman Kent retired from the CIA in 1967, and died in 1986.
In 2000, the CIA established a school dedicated to the pursuit of professionalism in the art and science of
intelligence analysisIntelligence Analysis is the process of taking known information about situations and entities of strategic, operational, or tactical importance, characterizing the known, and, with appropriate statements of probability, the future actions in those situations and by those entities...
, named after Sherman Kent.
He is the son of
William Kent (U.S. Congressman)William Kent was an American who served as a United States Congressman representing the State of California. He spearheaded the movement to create the Muir Woods National Monument by donating land to the Federal Government for the Monument.Kent was born in Chicago, Illinois...
and Elizabeth Thacher Kent, the brother of
Roger KentRoger Kent, , was the son of William Kent and Elizabeth Kent. His father served in the U.S. Congress between 1910 and 1917. After his family returned to California, Kent attended Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley beginning in 1919. He then boarded for three years at the Thacher School to...
(General Counsel of the Defense Department during the Truman Administration and Chairman of the California Democratic Party in the 1960s), the nephew of
Sherman Day ThacherSherman Day Thacher, , was the founder and headmaster of the Thacher School at Ojai, California. A graduate of Hopkins Grammar School, he attended Yale University and won second prize in English composition his Sophomore year; oration appointment Junior year; dissertation appointment Senior year;...
and the great-great-great grandson of American founding father
Roger ShermanRoger Sherman was an early American lawyer and politician. He served as the first mayor of New Haven, Connecticut, and served on the Committee of Five that drafted the Declaration of Independence, and was also a representative and senator in the new republic.He was the only person to sign all four...
.
Kent's Publications
- "Electoral Procedure Under Louis Philippe" (Yale Univ.Press, 1937)
- "Writing History" (NY, 1941; 1967)
- "Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy" (Princeton Univ. Press, 1949; 1966)
- "Words of Estimative Probability" (CIA, 1964)
- "The Law and Custom of the National Intelligence Estimate" (CIA, 1965)
- "The Making of an NIE" (CIA, 1967)
- "The Theory of Intelligence" (CIA 1968)
- "A Boy and a Pig, But Mostly Horses" (NY, 1974) ("Recounts the adventures of three boys during the summer they spend working on a Nevada ranch in the 1920’s")
- "Election of 1827 in France" (Harvard Univ.Press, 1975)
- "Reminiscences of a Varied Life" (San Rafael, CA, 1991)
Biographic Sources
External links